The public is losing faith in the police and politicians' ability to tackle crime because the criminal justice system is failing to deal with antisocial behaviour, a police chief has warned.

Peter Fahy, chief constable of Cheshire, who last week warned that a combination of cheap alcohol and parents who abdicate responsibility was fuelling antisocial behaviour, told the Guardian the public was right to think that antisocial behaviour was out of control.

Mr Fahy also said:

the criminal justice system was failing to protect victims and failing to rehabilitate persistent offenders;

government targets and a need for the police to meet centrally-set performance indicators led to increased bureaucracy for officers and made it harder to meet the needs of their local communities;

the public did not believe official statistics showing that crime was falling and that those fearful of low level disorder were right to demand more action;

the system was failing to tackle the underlying causes of crime, such as drug addiction and family breakdown, which caused a hard core of offenders to behave in an antisocial manner;

a fundamental rebalancing was needed for the criminal justice system - away from simply concentrating on punishment towards more rehabilitation and offers of help, backed up by sanctions for those who refused to change their behaviour.

Last week Mr Fahy called for parents to take more responsibility for their children, and said police should be able to ban street drinking. His intervention came after Garry Newlove, 47, died, allegedly after confronting a gang outside his home in Warrington, Cheshire, earlier this month, reigniting the debate about antisocial behaviour and crime. Mr Fahy said the police service was in the grip of a "culture of managerialism", where meeting centrally-set targets stunted forces' ability to meet local needs.

"We are measured month by month. It absolutely encourages short-termism," he said. "The obsession with statistics makes the criminal justice system less effective in tackling antisocial behaviour and issues which make the public fearful. They give less room for local police officers to take into account local priorities."

He said that measures such as more officers on the beat, building community contacts and school liaison officers take so long to work they cannot be easily measured, and are thus harder to justify spending resources on.

Mr Fahy said top officers had believed that falling crime statistics would reassure the public, but they had underestimated the level of fear. "The police have a tendency to say crime is coming down ... but if the perception of local people is of disorder and lack of control, they feel unsafe ... if you tell them things are better, you destroy your own credibility and their trust in you."

He said a greater focus was needed on solving the underlying causes of reoffending, calling it "rehabilitation with a hard edge."

The key issues were drug and alcohol addiction, family breakdown and poor parenting, he said.

Help should be offered to addicts, and to parents struggling to control their children, but those who refused to change should face sanctions, such as his call last week for underaged children to be taken away from parents who refused help to stop them drinking.

Mr Fahy said most professionals involved in the criminal justice system "will say it's the same small proportion of people causing problems ... It's that group of people the criminal justice system needs to be able to better address."

His comments came as a study by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) showed that knifepoint robberies have doubled in the last two years, from 25,500 in 2005 to 64,000 in the year to April 2007.

The CCJS figures mean that on average in the past year there were 175 knife robberies per day on the streets of England and Wales.

The government has commissioned a review of policing by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary, which senior officers hope will lead to reforms in accountability and neighbourhood policing.